Orthotown April 2024 - 34

EARNED PLACEMENT
or need additional aligner series,
troubleshooting poor aligner fi t and
providing coaching to the patients).
Life changes
Today, Lill and DeArment can leave
the offi ce knowing they're caught
up on clinical responsibilities and
can focus at home on their families.
" DentalMonitoring was singularly
responsible for giving us more
time with our families and generally
enjoying life more fully, " DeArment
says. " We also no longer felt the
need to hire a full-time orthodontist
to replace our lost associate. We
were not only able to manage our
current workload but actually grew
our production with less eff ort than
in the past.
" We did eventually add a partto
being able to schedule 14 to
16 new-patient exams per day, "
DeArment says. " If no IPR or attachments
are needed when delivering
an additional aligner series, the
patient can stop by the offi ce and
pick them up, or we can mail them
to their homes and restart these
patients' monitoring without an
extra offi ce visit. We have reduced
our one-doctor schedules from
80 patients a day to 50, and our
two-doctor schedules from 120
patients per day to 70 per day. "
Because there is less demand for
the doctors chairside, they have the
freedom to spend their time getting
their Invisalign Clin-Checks developed
and approved, as well as using
DentalMonitoring to customize
patient treatment (14-week routine
checks, elastic checks, deciding if
patients are ready for debanding
time orthodontist, one day a week,
but we were still able to replace
175 doctor clinical days by incorporating
this technology. "
Patients love it
What do the patients think? " We
received nearly overwhelming
positive response, " DeArment says.
" Most were impressed by the technology
and felt they were fortunate
to work with an offi ce that was on
the cutting edge of modern health
care delivery.
" Our younger patients thought
doing the scans was cool, but the
parents were even more enthusiastic,
knowing that we were
keeping their child accountable and
were monitoring their treatment
more regularly, with the ability to
intercept problems in real time and
make treatment more effi cient. But
mostly, parents enjoyed the conveAPRIL
2024 | 34 | ORTHOTOWN.COM
nience of reducing the number of
in-offi ce visits. "
Staffi ng up and
staffi ng down
One of the fi rst steps to succeed
with DentalMonitoring is assigning
a very organized team member
to monitor the DM dashboard,
respond to patient questions and
communicate progress reports,
both verbally and by video.
The DentalMonitoring implementation
team helps practices choose
the best person for this role.
Shenandoah Valley Orthodontics
had two full-time team members in
their lab, mainly tasked with submitting
Invisalign cases and printing
models on 3D printers. They decided
to outsource retainer fabrication
and free up Ashley Huntley to work
part time on the DM dashboard.
" Ashley is incredibly organized,
tech-savvy and dedicated to ensuring
remote care succeeded in our
practice, " DeArment says. " She was
the perfect choice to serve as our
remote care coordinator. " As the
practice grew, especially in aligner
share-of-chair (currently around
80%), the role expanded from
part-time to full-time monitoring
of the dashboard, checking scans
and communicating with patients
through the DM app.
" Concurrently, because we were
seeing fewer patients in the offi ce,
we were able to devote another
clinical member to our remote care
team on a full-time basis without
having to replace Ashley's position
on the clinical team, " DeArment
says. The practice had another clinical
team member leave six months
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